


the village hidden in the ashes

by Sectionladvivi



Category: Naruto
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Dragons, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-08-19 14:33:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20211340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sectionladvivi/pseuds/Sectionladvivi
Summary: uchiha have dragons au. slow build age appropriate sns. team 7 centric ft. baby dragons. story clogged with uchihas because i love uchihas





	1. sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> au details: the sharingan allow the uchiha to control dragons. the use of dragons in war somewhat alleviated the need for child soldiers so students don't graduate until they're 16. uchiha have not been slaughtered en masse (yet...), team 7 is not established (they are only classmates). other rules for this au will be made up as I go along. main ship will be sns. comment and i will unashamedly cater to you. thanks for watching please like and subscribe.

The man sat on the smooth black shelf of the mountainside and watched the sun rise off the distant forest edge.

The light took a long time to cut the cold, and he sat with his cloak wrapped around him like a shroud, letting the wind whip his hair hard enough to sting his cheeks, but he didn’t move. Not even when he sensed the presence behind him.

“Your shift is over, Itachi,” said the presence.

Itachi turned his head enough to see the arrivals on the platform: a dragon, crouching halfway out of a swirling portal, and the man stepping down off its shoulder. He wore the same black cloak, the same red symbol emblazoned on it, but he wore a mask, too.

Characteristic of the other masks designed for flight, it swept back over his face past his cheeks, encompassing his whole head almost liked a second skull. The maskface was dominated by a dizzying spiral pattern, and the red lenses revealed nothing of the man behind them.

“Are you taking over, then?” asked Itachi, his placid expression revealing as little as the mask.

“Thought I’d give you a break,” said the masked man, as the dragon finished crawling out of the portal behind him. It had to tuck its wings close to its body to fit through the gap, and sat up to coil its long tail the rest of the way out and around its haunches. Sitting upright, the dragon was about twenty feet tall. It was deep gray, nearly black in color, and mistakable for black if it hadn’t been standing against the true black of the mountainside. A broken stripe of white ran down its back, from behind the base of its horns all the way down to the tail, resembling the outlines of vertebrae. The eyes were slitted against the sunlight, but the glint of red between the lids was the same red as the lenses of the rider’s mask.

It exhaled a thick cloud of steam into the frigid air.

“Thought you could go see your little brother,” said the rider.

Itachi looked back over the landscape, the vast blanket of forest coming slowly under the sun’s rising dominion. From this view there seemed no end to it. “My brother doesn’t want to see me.”

The rider scratched the back of his head. “How old is he again?”

“Nearly sixteen.”

“Tricky age,” said the masked man. “But he’s a tricky kid anyway, isn’t he?”

The first inkling of expression came into Itachi’s eyes; he looked at the other man with flint in them.

“All right, all right.” The rider raised his hands warily and changed the subject. “Go see Shisui, at least. He just returned from his mission. Your gloom is contagious. Maybe he can do something about it.”

“I’m not gloomy.” Itachi got up, gathering his hair to tie it back, and walked away from the cliff edge. He didn’t look at the dragon until he had nearly passed it— only then did his eyes flicker over the fan-shaped crest, branded into the flank. He stopped and waited. When the rider (not looking at him, but gazing out over the sunrise, hands on hips) did nothing, he prompted, with some sharpness:

“Obito.”

“Oh, yeah,” said the rider, turning. “You want a lift?” He lifted a thumb at the dragon.

There were no stairs to this shelf, no doorways. No way on or off except by dragonwing.

Mostly.

“Not a lift,” said Itachi.

“Have it your way.” The rider snapped his fingers, and the opaque portal reappeared, this time much smaller, just tall enough to admit a human man. Itachi passed through without a word.

Obito dropped his arm and let the portal swirl shut.

“You’re welcome,” he said sardonically to the empty air. The dragon puffed another cloud of sleepy steam.

—

Itachi hadn’t been to the main roost in nearly a year. When he stepped out of the spiral and onto a low cliff in a massive chamber, looking up at rows of occupied perches, he didn’t externally react, but his back stiffened. His Sharingan activated on instinct. He hadn’t seen these wings, these distinct heads, as more than an outline in the sky for months, but he recognized them all immediately. In particular he recognized the dragon snoozing directly in front of him, even though the depth of the chamber had rid it of all color, turning it a vaguely crepuscular gray.

He had a second to be annoyed at Obito before he felt a familiar tug on his ponytail.

“Didn’t think I’d find you down here,” said Shisui, who already had a grin on his face when Itachi turned around. His mask dangled around his neck; the chapped state of his cheeks and the tousled state of his short hair said he’d been flying without it again.

“I didn’t expect to find myself here, either.”

“Obito, huh?” guessed Shisui. “He’s taking liberties.”

“He’s making a habit of it.”

“Well, I’m glad he did.” Shisui hadn’t stopped playing with the end of his ponytail; Itachi knew that what he really wanted was to run his fingers through it in private. They hadn’t been alone together in a while. The aftermath of the latest clash kept Shisui busy— though, thankfully, his dragon’s immaturity kept them away from the battlefield proper.

And Itachi…

He was kept away from the battlefield entirely.

Shisui read him too well. “You know,” he said gently. “I have some downtime. When he’s up again, do you want to go for a ride? I know it’s not the same, but… it’s something.”

But Itachi shook his head. “I have to watch Sasuke,” he said.

Shisui brightened. “Oh, Sasuke! I haven’t seen him in a while. I bet he’s taller now. Has he caught up to you yet?”

Itachi finally smiled, faintly. “He’s trying. But he still looks the same to me.”

“Once a baby brother, always a baby brother, huh?” Shisui grinned. “I’m done here.” He took off and tossed his mask down next to the racked harness, calling, “Oi!” at the dragon, who made no indication of hearing him. “Behave yourself. No fighting.”

The dragon slightly parted one eye as they walked away.

The exit from the main roost emptied into one of the main passages under the mountain. It was made to look like the village outside, complete with painted blue sky and white clouds, and with shops and market stalls. Some were only a part of the mural of city life, but some were real, selling dumplings to tired looking riders or Uchiha clan members come to visit their sons and fathers at work.

Shisui paid for the dumplings.

As they walked, Itachi kept his eyes on the false sky. Miles of rock lay between him and the real sky, and it was higher still to reach the part of the sky he was accustomed to. The difference in air could not have been greater, or stranger. Deep underground, the air was filtered clean, but ultimately stale, faintly oily from the street food and occasionally carrying a whiff of dragon on it. The thinnest air, the air where dragons lived, tasted like nothing, smelled like nothing but the occasional spike of pine.

It was all too easy to remember.

Had it really been a year?

Maybe Obito had been right, that his gloom was contagious. He hadn’t realized how dismal the people around him seemed until he saw how they lit up at Shisui’s hello, half of them stopping to ask how his mission had gone. Shisui seemed to chatter freely and with ease, but jumped from one encounter to another relatively quickly, until the two of them finally escaped the main vein, into an offshoot passage. “Whew,” said Shisui, for Itachi’s benefit. “A guy gets popular when he takes off for a while.”

“They miss your optimism,” said Itachi frankly. “Everyone is grim; the Village is not well.”

“You’re the grimmest of them all,” said Shisui, with a sigh for effect. “Back after nearly a month, and what kind of reception do I get? Not even a ‘welcome back’ kiss.”

“I’m not being grim, I’m being straightforward,” said Itachi, but he did kiss him. When he had Shisui close, he could finally admit it: “I’ve made Sasuke hate me.”

Shisui rested his forehead on Itachi’s for a moment before suggesting, “Maybe he just needs to hate you for a while. Things can’t always be sunshine and rainbows between brothers.” He kissed him again. “It won’t last forever.”

“I’m serious about the Village.” Itachi didn’t let himself be comforted.

Shisui didn’t give up on comforting him, but he did get serious, too, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. “It’s rough out there; your absence is definitely felt. Is it really so bad here, too?”

“Come to the next clan meeting,” said Itachi. “You’ll see.”

—

Late afternoon, classes let out, releasing young shinobi to the streets, the shops, and in this case, the shuriken practice yard, where Sasuke Uchiha courted nostalgia and vented his ire at the same time. No perfect line of shuriken satisfied him, no matter how evenly embedded in the hay stuffed targets. Even aiming outside his regular field of vision was no challenge, because Sasuke Uchiha had a secret.

He swung a handful of kunai almost at random, and hit five separate targets dead center.

“We get it,” called a loud, obnoxious voice. “You’re good at shuriken. Can we go now?”

Sasuke turned his head just enough to frown at the source of the voice.

Naruto Uzumaki hung upside down from a netted obstacle meant for climbing, ankles looped in the net, arms crossed over his chest. His forehead protector looked like it was ready to slide off.

“Are you using your Sharingan?” he asked, picking his nose. “Isn’t that cheating?”

“I told you not to talk about that,” said Sasuke, ripping a shuriken out of its target.

“Nobody’s around,” said Naruto, looking left and right and shrugging, risking his forehead protector even more. Sasuke watched the inevitability of its course out of the corner of his eye.

“Voices carry,” he said, returning the shuriken to their pouch. “Especially your voice.” He reclaimed a kunai from a stuffed straw man.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Naruto scowled. The headband slipped another inch.

“It means,” said Sasuke, approaching, kunai in hand. “That you’re loud…” He extended his arm; Naruto flinched, and Sasuke caught the headband just as it slipped free. “...idiot.” He dangled it in front of his face.

Brow deeply furrowed, Naruto flipped right side up and dropped to the ground, grabbing the headband back from Sasuke, who returned his dark look with an expressionless one.

“Why are you keeping it a secret, anyway?” asked Naruto, refastening his forehead protector.

“You don’t need to know,” said Sasuke. “That’s Uchiha business.”

Naruto rolled his eyes. “Huh. I don’t see what’s so great or interesting about all this ‘Uchiha business’...” But there was something of a pout in his look.

Sasuke hid a small, real smile under a smirk. “Jealous?”

“Of course not.” Naruto scoffed as loudly as he could, kicking the dust as they quit the yard. “You’re gonna get eaten by one of those dragons any day now.”

“Then you’ll have no one to spar with but Sakura,” said Sasuke. “And she always beats you.”

A massive shadow passed overhead. Sasuke didn’t look up, by Naruto did, craning his neck and shielding his eyes to squint skywards. “Do you know that one?” he asked.

“It’s Inabi,” said Sasuke. “He’s back early.” He frowned somewhat, looking up at the rapidly disappearing dragon. They both watched it disappear into the mountainside.

“When are you going to get one?” asked Naruto. They strolled along, Naruto jamming his hands in his pockets and weaving as they walked, keeping an eye skywards in case another dragon passed by. The bit of town around the academy was mostly abandoned, all the students and teachers having off for home, but he still leaned over and covered his mouth when he said, “You know, now that you’ve got the Sharingan?”

“My family already had a dragon,” said Sasuke flatly, sidestepping him and walking on.

“Scared?” suggested Naruto, managing to layer faux innocence, an actual question, a hint of consolation, and an expertly crafted, laser targeted barb into a single word.

Sasuke’s cheek twitched.

“The Uchiha aren’t scared of dragons.”

“Sure, sure… but didn’t someone get eaten by one? Like last year?” Naruto squinted at the sky again, this time in an attempt to remember.

“His Sharingan was immature,” said Sasuke.

“Sure, sure… but isn’t yours?” Naruto looked over and pulled down an eyelid. “You only got it like a month ago.”

The low crackle of tension between them might have escalated if someone hadn’t called out from ahead.

“Naruto! Sasuke-kun!”

They stopped, silently shooting lightning bolts out of their eyes at each other, as Sakura caught up to them. She read their expressions and sighed. “What now?”

“Sasuke’s scared of dragons,” said Naruto, with a big, performative eye roll.

Sasuke refused to take the bait until Sakura slapped Naruto on the arm. “Who wouldn’t be scared of those things?” She chided him. “Until they’re under control of the Sharingan, they’re just monsters—”

“They’re not monsters,” said Sasuke sharply. “The hatchlings are infants. They don’t know any better.”

“Sure, infants with giant claws and teeth,” muttered Naruto, still mulish, but sufficiently chastised by Sakura’s smack. He pouted for a second, then some tiny, well-meaning lightbulb blinked on in a far corner of his empty blonde head. He brightened. “Hey, Sasuke. The eggs are still sealed right now, right?”

“Until someone else awakens their Sharingan,” confirmed Sasuke, but he looked suspicious.

“So, there’s nobody working in there, right? They’re only guarding the doors?”

Sakura was already shaking her head at the bad idea forming in front of her. “Naruto, Sasuke’s not going to sneak you into the Uchiha’s private creche.”

“Eh, whatever,” said Naruto, not looking at them, but away, nonchalant. “His brother would probably catch him, anyway.”

Sasuke’s eyes narrowed.

—

“This is a terrible idea, and you’re going to get us all in trouble,” Sakura reminded Naruto, nose in the air, pretending she wasn’t just as enthused about their self-imposed mission.

“You didn’t have to come.” Sasuke frowned.

“Of course I did. Who else is going to watch your backs?” Sakura sighed heavily, as if to say ‘This is my burden— my weight to carry’.

They walked down the main street of the Uchiha compound, under the mountain, under the painted blue sky and murals of Konoha street life. They caught a few curious glances as they went; Sakura and Naruto’s hair made them stand out in a largely monochromatic community. But whenever someone caught sight of who they were accompanying, their faces brighten.

“Ah, is that you, Sasuke?” asked a man at a dumpling cart, leaning on it with a crinkly-eyed smile. “You’ve grown since I saw you last— you must be busy with your missions.” He looked over Sasuke’s shoulder at Naruto and Sakura’s beaming, interested faces. “Are these your friends?”

“Classmates.”

“I still remember your favorite— Here, it’s my treat. It’s good to see you out with other kids.”

Sasuke didn’t get the chance to do more than scowl before Naruto and Sakura accepted the offering with profuse thanks, clasping their hands, Naruto elbowing Sasuke until he did the same. The man looked on beaming as Naruto wolfed down his portion. “I just spoke to your brother,” he said to Sasuke. “Young Shisui had returned and was with him— it’s always good to see that boy back. I haven’t seen Itachi smile like that in a long time. Poor lad.”

Sasuke didn’t say anything; Naruto and Sakura exchanged a look.

“Which way did my brother go?” Sasuke asked.

“Hm.” The man rubbed his chin. “I think the direction you came in from. I thought he was maybe going to meet you after class.”

Sasuke quickly scanned the street, then nodded at the other two, and headed in the opposite direction.

“Thank you,” Naruto and Sakura chorused at the dumpling man. He waved them off with a smile, and they darted after Sasuke, raising a few more curious looks as they went.

The crowd was thickest at this time of day, as shifts changed and children ran home after school, filling the tunnel with dark haired heads all heading rapidly towards their respective destinations. For a second Naruto lost track of Sasuke. He stopped, and Sakura immediately ran into his back.

“Ow!”

“S-sorry, Sakura-chan—“

“Hurry up.” Sasuke reappeared immediately in front of them, frowning, more urgency in his face. “The shift change is in ten minutes.”

“Is that good, or bad?” Naruto asked, but Sasuke was already off again.

They exited into a side street, Naruto following so closely that this time it was his turn to bump into Sasuke’s back when he stopped suddenly. Naruto peered over his shoulder; at the end of the street were a handful of men, several with the masks of dragon riders hanging off their shoulders, all involved in some heavy discussion.

“We can’t go this way,” murmured Sasuke, then suddenly told them to “Move!” and grabbed Naruto by the arm, who grabbed Sakura by the arm, and dragged them through a side door.

Two men passed by where they had just been standing. The three of them peeked around the corner to watch the backs of the two heads as they approached the small crowd.

One head had the black hair of an Uchiha, the other did not. His hair was silver.

The men in the crowd crossed their arms; even down the passage it was easy to read the stiffness with which they met the men.

“What are you doing down here?”

“It’s our shift, Itami.” The Uchiha facing away from them had a somewhat overly relaxed way of talking. It was un-Uchihalike. “Don’t say you didn’t see my name on the board.”

“I saw your name, Obito— but not his.”

“This way,” hissed Sasuke.

The silver haired man began to turn his head as if he had somehow sensed them; Naruto and Sakura quickly ducked their heads and followed Sasuke.

This side passage turned into another, and another. They divided and came together again at weird intervals, and though there was no way to really gauge it, there was an overall feeling of going downwards. Of descending.

“This is like a maze,” said Sakura, stopping to reach out and touch a worn Uchiha crest on the wall, the only markers or decoration they had passed, and they had passed more than a dozen. Or, had passed the same one more than a dozen times.

“How do you even know we’re going the right way?” Naruto complained. “It’s stuffy down here.”

“I grew up here,” said Sasuke. He touched the crest, too, as he passed it, only briefly. It wasn’t as high as he remembered it; he really had grown since he’d been here last. “We’re almost there.”

‘There’ was a turn and a sudden stop in the passage. Directly in front of them was a big flat wall, featureless, and nothing else.

“Great!” said Naruto, throwing his hands up. “Good job, Sasuke.”

“Naruto, shut up!” Sakura snapped at him. She took a threatening step and he backed hastily away.

Sasuke smirked. “It just looks like a blank wall to you two, doesn’t it?”

Sakura, fist wrapped in Naruto’s collar, turned and blinked. “Isn’t it?”

“Not with these eyes.” Sasuke thumbed at his Sharingan, which flashed red once before he stepped forward, into the wall, and vanished.

Naruto and Sakura looked after him, looked at each other, and blinked.

“Uh,” said Naruto. Sakura let go of him, and they both reached out to touch the wall; their fingertips passed through it. They both pulled back in surprise.

“‘These eyes’,” scoffed Naruto, and strode right through the wall. On the other side Sakura immediately heard him say “Ow!”

Coming through the fake rock herself, she saw that he’d walked directly into a low-hanging stalactite and was bent over, clutching his face. Sasuke stood beside him with his arms crossed, unimpressed.

This tunnel looked more like a cave than a passage. The walls were uneven, the height of the roof above them varied, and stalactites and stalagmites and other strange rock formations had been left in their wild state. There were no more Uchiha crests painted on the walls, only the occasional lamp, and the light was an unnatural blue.

“This is creepy,” said Naruto. Still holding his face, he looked down the passage, then directly overhead, where the ceiling shot high out of sight, into the dark. He gulped.

“It’s beautiful,” said Sakura staunchly, though she eyed the ground warily, as if expecting something to come crawling out of the dark.

“This is an old tunnel,” said Sasuke. “They don’t use it any more; I only found it by mistake when I was younger.” His face omitted some memory, and he turned away from them, facing into the darker part of the tunnel. “Let’s go.”

They went. The tunnel fanned out, broken up by rock formations and strange dark offshoots, until they were walking in a cavern that definitely didn’t look like it led anywhere.

“Say, are you sure we’re actually going somewhere?” asked Naruto, skirting another low stalactite. The bridge of his nose was still red from the one he’d walked into.

Sasuke’s face wasn’t so sure of himself anymore. “It’s— it’s different from how I remember,” he finally admitted, and scowled and stuck his nose up when Naruto pointed an accusatory finger at him.

“You led us in here, Sasuke! Now we’re going to starve to death in this dumb cave. Iruka-sensei’s going to be so mad when he finds my skeleton…”

“We’re not going to starve to death,” said Sasuke, pointing at one of the blue lights hanging off a stalactite. “The lamps go out after about a week and a half; these ones are still lit. This area is being actively patrolled, like all Uchiha territory.”

“Or maybe someone was here a week and a half ago, and they aren’t coming back,” countered Naruto.

“_Don’t_ start bickering again,” said Sakura. “We’re not in the middle of nowhere. Even if we’re lost, someone will find us sooner or later.” Though she looked queasy at the idea of being stuck alone with Naruto for more than a few hours.

“Hmph,” said Naruto. “I still think that—”

The blue light farthest ahead flickered out. They all fell silent; the second farthest flickered out, too. One by one, bringing a wall of deep underground darkness towards them, the lights flicked out. On impulse, Naruto reached out and grabbed Sasuke’s sleeve, just before the wall of dark hit them. Sakura gave a high pitched “Eep!” sound, and then the final light went out.

They all stood in the dark, and for a second, the only sound was their quickened breathing, even Sasuke’s betraying some fear.

“Oh, this is bad.”

“Which one of you is standing on my foot?”

“Does anybody have a match?”

“Let go of my shirt.”

“This is how I die… alone in a cave.”

“Alone? There are three of us here.”

“Shut up. Do either of you see that?”

“See what?”

Once their eyes adjusted somewhat to the darkness, they all realized that they could see it: a faint reddish light, illuminating the opening to another passage.

They all looked at each other; in the dark, their faces were faint and unreadable. They managed to come to the same conclusion.

The three of them slipped through the narrow opening, one by one, and then stood, looking down, into an incredible scene.

“Wow,” said Naruto.

They stood on a ledge overlooking a deep, round chamber. An offshoot of the ledge trailed off to the left and down to the lower level, where a shallow depression looked like it had been dug into the rock. Dug by something with enormous claws. A shaft of light came through a high spot above them, where the sun managed to penetrate at a diagonal angle, and bounced off a sparkling deposit in the wall to cast a strange and disorienting array of light all around the chamber. The fractured light bounced off all three of their surprised faces.

Nestled in the base of the chamber were three huge, multi-hued eggs.

“Cool!” yelled Naruto, with a characteristic absolute lack of caution. His shout echoed around the chamber and made Sasuke and Sakura both wince.

“Pipe down,” said Sasuke. “Idiot.” Now that they had proof they were in inhabited areas, his frostiness returned. “Unless you want us to be found out.”

Naruto barely seemed to hear him. “Are they all that big?” he asked.

“Mostly,” said Sasuke, but evasively. He was trying to remember if they all _had_ been so big. Unlike his memories of everything else, of things that seemed small now, these eggs seemed gigantic. “Hey! Naruto!”

Naruto was already sliding down the side of the ledge towards the bottom of the chamber.

“Naruto!” Sakura barked at him. “What are you doing?!”

He dropped to his feet on the floor, slapped dirt off his pants, and looked back up at them. “What, you don’t want a closer look?”

“Well…” Sakura glanced sidelong at Sasuke.

Without a word, Sasuke walked to the edge of the overhang, swung his legs over, and dropped down.

Wordless permission given, Sakura was quick to follow the two down.

Naruto went right up to one of the eggs and stood in front of it, hands on hips. It made him look smaller than he already was, at fifteen still waiting for a growth spurt that would catch him up to Sasuke’s half inch advantage. The egg looked almost double his height.

Naruto waved a hand in front of its surface and got a faint reflection back; the eggs were faintly glossy, not enough to see your face in one, but enough to count how many fingers you were holding up.

Sakura and Sasuke’s reflections joined his.

“Why are they different colors?” asked Sakura.

That, Sasuke couldn’t answer. He frowned. The colors were different from the dark shells he knew, and it was troubling; he couldn’t reconcile his experience with uniform black eggs compared to these things.

One, the largest by half a foot, was deep purple fading to a black base. Another, to the left, was icy blue. The third, the one directly in front of them, was an unflinching blood red.

Naruto reached out to tap on it with his knuckles.

“Knock knock,” he said.

Sasuke yanked him back by his collar. “Idiot!” he said. “It’s not enough for you to sneak into private Uchiha territory, you have to touch everything in it?”

“What’s the big deal?” asked Naruto. “It’s not gonna hurt it—”

_Knock. Knock._

The three of them froze stock still. They stared at the semi-reflective surface of the egg, and watched some darkness shift inside of it, returning the sound once more:

_Knock. Knock._


	2. the ancients

_Knock. Knock._

“Uh,” said Naruto. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“No,” said Sasuke, already backing away, dragging Naruto by his collar. Sakura backed away, too, her expression showing regret for the first time; she should have just stayed late after school and helped clean. Now she was going to die here with this idiot—

“Look!” she cried, pointing.

Behind the icy blue shell of the egg on the left, something dark was shifting there, too. Then, from that egg, came the sound again:

_Knock, knock._

_This is bad._ Sasuke knew the signs; his brother had told him about it, when he was younger and Itachi would come home from the dragon roost, ready for dinner and a nap only to be besieged with questions.

_“Say, say Nii-san, how big are dragons up close? I only get to see them in the sky.”_

_“Nii-san, can I ride your dragon soon?_

_“Nii-san, are the eggs like this?” Holding up a chicken egg. Itachi taking it from him and cracking it in the pan, saying serenely,_

_“No, Sasuke. I’ll show you them sometime.”_

_“When? Today?”_

_“Not today. Sorry, Sasuke.”_

The more he had nagged, the more Itachi had eventually revealed. When an egg was ready to hatch, he said, it would begin to make small sounds. Sometimes you could hear the dragon inside. Sometimes it would chirp. Sometimes you would only hear it shifting. Sometimes, near the end, you would hear the tap of little claws scraping on the shell.

Finally he had taken Sasuke to the creche for the first time, past the huge double doors with the Uchiha crest painted huge on either side, under the eyes of the posted guard, and let him walk up to one of the dark eggs. At the time it had been huge to him; now, he remembered that it was only a little taller than his brother.

These eggs were at least twice as big. But the signs… the signs were the same.

He remembered the sound of tooth and claw clicking behind the shell, and how Itachi had hastily pulled him back and taken him whining out of the creche.

_“One day, Sasuke. But not today.”_

“We have to go,” he said.

He had the Sharingan. It might keep him safe, it might not. It definitely wasn’t enough to protect all of them.

He thought of Itachi in a bitter wave; wishing his brother was here, then immediately resenting him for being there even in thought.

“What’s happening?” asked Sakura, gripping the back of his shirt.

“They’re hatching.”

“What? Aren’t the eggs sealed?”

“Not these eggs. We have to go.”

But something strange had come over Naruto. He resisted being dragged; it was as if he had grown roots into the rock, turned into a stalagmite himself.

“What are you doing?” demanded Sasuke.

“You don’t hear that?” asked Naruto. He put his finger in his ear and wriggled it.

Sasuke tried to grab him by the wrist, but reached too low, getting his hand instead. By accident, he thought.

That was enough to startle Naruto out of whatever strangeness had taken him; he looked at Sasuke, then at their hands in surprise.

Sasuke let go as if scalded.

Something punched through a surface of the red egg. They all whipped their heads around to watch it uncurl— a long, slimy arm, as orange as fire, tipped with five vicious talons.

_Five._

More like a human hand than a dragon’s paw, it curled in and out of a fist, then reached down to rake the surface of the egg, leaving deep gouges. The arm withdrew, darkness shifted in the eye, and suddenly the gape in the shell was filled with a piercing, hyperdilated eye, almost catlike, as blood red as the shell that ringed it.

“You really don’t hear that?” asked Naruto. “That voice?” The strange reverie had taken him again; he didn’t sound afraid, only puzzled.

The creature inside puffed, and a massive plume of hot steam shot up to filter out through the hole. It was hidden within this cloud of steam that the egg shattered, sending a big shard spinning out of the haze directly to their feet.

Something heavy hit the ground within the cloud.

They all crowded against the back wall, below the ledge where they’d entered. Sasuke’s eyes darted towards the path up to the exit; the hatching egg lay between them and escape.

There was only one thing for it; Sasuke was going to have to use his Sharingan, however immature. He tried to remind himself that the dragon was only an infant— hungry, disoriented, but not evil. Not malevolent.

The infant dragon thrust its head out of the cloud and screamed.

Compared to his experience with dragons, this was an alien head.

Instead of the characteristic double horns, dull-tipped, this thing had five. Two curled above the eyes in threatening twists. The other three formed a strange symmetry, two on the jawline, one on either side, and the last under the chin. The whole vision of it wasn’t just strange… it was primordial. It looked like the dragons of myth painted on the walls of the creche, the ones that looked so different from the hatchlings, the ones painted in all colors, shown seizing and feeding on whales.

Already the size of a large cart, the dragon lumbered out of the steam with its talons splayed out, raking deep marks on the stone floor. Its wings were suctioned to its back alone its spine, still trying to pull free of the remnant egg fluid.

It lunged at them. Sakura screamed.

And the infant dragon tripped over its own feet and fell onto its face.

It didn’t occur to Sasuke that Naruto would be so absolutely, mind-blowingly stupid to go to the aid of a murderous baby dragon. But it should have.

“Hey, watch out!” said Naruto, and Sasuke’s fingers closed on empty air as the _colossal_ idiot stepped into range of the thrashing dragon to try and boost it up by the shoulder.

The dragon lifted its head, and ice flooded Sasuke’s body. He saw a vision of those jaws clamping shut over Naruto’s head, and his vision went gray. His knees sagged, and Sakura had to catch him.

The righted dragon regarded Naruto, who stood on his tiptoes to look into the blood red eyes with the same curiosity. He reached up to grab the twin, twisting horns on its brow and pretended to grapple them with absolutely no fear. “You’re hungry, huh?” he asked, grinning into the dragon’s face. “Same here— I just ate, but wandering around caves gives a guy an appetite, you know?” He turned back to them, beaming. “Hey, Sasuke, you were right; he’s only just a baby. Sasuke?”

Naruto’s expression told him how white his face must have been.

Sasuke’s shame was matched only by his confusion. _‘The Uchiha aren’t scared of dragons’_, he had said, not admitting his personal failing as an Uchiha: he had grown afraid. And (though it didn’t make him forgive himself) for good reason; without the Sharingan’s control, the dragons _were_ monsters, were little more than impulses of hunger and rage without direction.

The dragon should have been tearing Naruto to pieces.

“Oh!” said Sakura, grabbing his sleeve.

None of them had noticed the breakage of a second egg in the drama of the fire-colored dragon’s arrival, but now a white snout emerged, crawling up over the lip of the depression. It had the same head shape as the first dragon, the same perplexing arrangements of five horns, but it was pure winter white with ice blue eyes. Fixated on the two of them.

Naruto he could almost understand, but when Sakura let go of him and walked forward, he was again too shocked to react, to stop her in time. To move at all.

Shameful fear pinned him to the wall.

The white dragon came waddling gracelessly, and Sakura met it, not with fear, but with a kind of reproving attitude. One hand on her hip, she touched the thing’s nose. “Ew,” she said, lifting her hand and grimacing. “You’re all slimy.”

The sound of splitting eggshell came for the third time.

Sasuke slapped his hands over his ears as a sudden voice flooded his head— no, not a voice. Nothing so organized as a voice. It was an oppressive and nightmarish presence, one that seeded itself in a previously unknown recess of his brain and exploded to fill every inch of him. It was a presence that mapped itself to him, that seized the reins of his unconscious. He felt the him that was left to him stretch, stretch until he was sure he couldn’t possibly survive it. He fell to his knees unseeing, feeling his Sharingan pulsing under his eyelids.

“Sasuke!” shouted Naruto.

Sasuke wiped his eyes, and looked down at his hand. There was blood smeared on the back of it. He touched the corner of his eye and took his fingers away to find them red.

Hot breath touched his face, and he looked up into two giant black eyes.

The third dragon had the same horns as the first two, but it had something else, too— a kind of primordial ridge, a bulge on the forehead that tapered down to the nose, giving the dragon a strange and convex profile. The head, massive, black as shadow, filled his entire field of vision. In its dark eyes he saw his intact reflection, complete with spinning red eyes and blood on his cheeks.

The dragon Aoda contemplated Sasuke the same way he contemplated her, curiosity mingling with abjection like water with oil. The dragon felt his petty attempts to repel her and snarled, pushing back on the feeling. Sasuke’s nose began to bleed. He put his hands flat on the dragon’s face, looking directly into her unblinking eyes, and summed up all the strength he had behind his Sharingan. He tried, teeth gritted, to tear himself away from this alien mind in one blow, like ripping off a bandage.

_Rip._

Indescribable pain broke open inside his head. The dragon screamed once, and he fainted.

—

“You’ve been here a lot, haven’t you?”

Shisui asked gently, without a hint of reproach, but Itachi felt chastised anyway.

He looked on at the memorial stone, feeling the breeze lift the hair on his cheeks, for a moment remembering the lift of air rising on a dragon’s back. The memory felt like imagination now.

Itachi had never felt more grounded, looking at the long list of names.

“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” said Shisui. “It couldn’t be helped. Most people consider you a hero.”

“Sasuke doesn’t.”

“Sasuke is young,” said Shisui, with an affectionate grimace. “Remember when you were his age? Just as serious. A little shorter, I think.” He reached out to ruffle his hair, then let his fingers linger.

The graveyard was immaculate, empty now but clearly well tended. Each stone was polished, and there were only fresh cut flowers, the old ones removed hardly before they could wilt.

“Should we go visit your parents?” he asked

Itachi answered by leading the way, down the rows.

When they reached it, Itachi knelt to peel a leaf off the corner of his mother’s headstone. His parents’ graves still had a faint residue of dew on them.

“Hello mother, father,” he said. “Shisui has returned.”

Shisui dipped a bow at their graves. “Don’t worry too much about your son; I know he’s grim sometimes, but I’ll cheer him up.”

Shisui reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. Unfolding it, he took out a little pressed flower of a strange color, an almost ashy purple, with tiny petals.

“Shisui,” said Itachi sharply.

Shisui knelt to place the strange little flowers between their headstones. Not looking up, he said, “I know. Don’t worry, I wasn’t caught.”

“You shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.” Itachi’s voice was as worried as it was disapproving.

“I had to.” Shisui looked up at him. “Because you couldn’t.” When Itachi looked away, with a bitterness that was unlike him, Shisui added, “Your family is my family, too, you know. I can’t fight beside you anymore, but I can do this.” He reached up for Itachi’s hand. “Let me help you honor them.”

“I’m not sure I can honor anyone anymore,” said Itachi. “I’m glad you can. Thank you. But be careful.” His tone didn’t totally let Shisui off the hook.

Shisui grinned up at him. “I always am.”

“Itachi!”

Itachi didn’t immediately turn; Shisui looked up, over his shoulder, at the figure waving vehemently from the entrance to the field. The urgency in their voice was clear.

Itachi’s face said he already knew what the summons was, and when they shouted, “It’s Sasuke!” his face betrayed nothing, and when Shisui looked at him, Itachi was watching the sun’s course overhead.

Itachi remembered the red sunrise of that morning, and wondered if he had seen a premonition.

—

The dragons broke open from above.

Rubble crashed down on the other side of the chamber as a sleek, horn-topped head emerged, followed by a narrow body, rippling with muscle. It seemed almost small until it struck the ground and threw its wings open to balance itself, and for a second, sheltered them all from the light.

Two other dragons followed, but remained perched on the broken rock, looking down at the scene below.

The three newly hatched dragons responded to their roaring arrival with snarls.

“What have you done?” demanded one of the riders from above.

The dragon on the ground extended its neck towards the hatchlings and made a strange sound for a dragon— a cooing noise, almost like a pigeon. They hissed their reply. The rider jumped down from the saddle. Holding one hand out in a universal gesture of ‘chill out’, he reached up with the other and pulled off his spiral mask.

What lay underneath was hardly more reassuring than the mask. One half of his face had been through some kind of accident, healed in a near-spiral of scars centered around his right eye, almost mirroring the pattern on the mask.

The Sharingan gleamed from the scarred side, but the other side was hidden, leaving his face dominated by the ominous twists of his old wound. They made a strange landscape of his face in the poor light.

“If you relax, they will too,” he said.

Naruto, predictably to anyone who knew him, paid little to no attention. “Sasuke!” he yelled. “Hey, Sasuke!”

Sasuke still lay slumped on the ground, face covered by his hair, one hand lying palm up with blood on it. The purple hatchling crouched over him making a constant low hiss, which racketed rapidly up into a rattling snarl when Naruto tried to approach, flashing her red eyes at him.

The flame-colored hatchling dove at her, nearly knocking Naruto to the ground. He grabbed the dragon by the hind foot and shouted, “Oi! Kurama!”

The hatchlings faced each other and made horrible, draconic threats with their mouths wide open and all of their teeth bared.

“I said to relax!” snapped the man. “Not the opposite.”

“Obito, this isn’t your business,” snapped one of the riders still perched above. Their two dragons eyed the drama with interest. At the others, he shouted, “Do you know what the hell you’ve done?”

Sakura looked up from the head of the white dragon, looking stricken, her arms around its muzzle as if it wear a teddy bear to hold for comfort, not an oversized monster.

“Trust me,” said Obito. “I’ve done this before.”

Naruto hesitated, still hanging on to Kurama’s wing, staring at what he could see of Sasuke’s slumped form under the purple dragon’s hissing head. “Hey, Sasuke!” he shouted. “Hey! What are you doing just lying there? Get up!”

Though his voice was almost scornful, his eyes were wide, whites flashing in the shadow of dragon wings, and Obito could see the white knuckled grip he had on the dragon, who didn’t seem to feel it. The fire colored dragon seemed to jeer, lifting his red eyes to glare at the dragons overhead.

Sasuke stirred.

He reached out slowly to prop himself up, rising on one elbow. His hair still covered his face as he lifted his head. They all watched him push his hair back from his face; there was blood clotting around his nostrils and drying in the corners of his eyes.

“Sasuke-kun!” cried Sakura in relief. Naruto looked on in silence, his eyes almost triumphant, but still concerned, eyebrows knit together as he watched Sasuke rise.

Sasuke stood shakily next to the purple dragon, not touching her or looking at any of them. He reached up and touched his upper lip, pulled his hand away to look at the blood on it.

After a lingering silence, he asked, “What are they?”

He didn’t look at Obito, but the question was for him.

“I was raised around dragons,” said Sasuke. “These aren’t them.”

True enough, the difference between the three hatchlings and the three mature dragons was dramatic. Number of horns aside, the shape of them was different. The heads of the hatchlings were more convex, with arched profiles and blunter heads. The adult dragons were all nearly the same color: almost black on the top, with pale bellies, none vividly colored, but all a kind of crepuscular violet-gray.

“Obito,” snapped a voice from above, trying to check him. Obito didn’t acknowledge them, only Sasuke, and his two classmates.

“They are the ancients,” he said.


	3. kamui

_The ancients._

The voice in Sasuke’s head confirmed it— not in words, because the infant dragon had no understanding of words, but in the way the voice tasted. Like grave dirt.

It took all of his will to stand, and he avoided turning his head, because there she stood at the periphery of his vision, watching him. He could feel the sting of her red eyes on his cheek.

Sasuke knew the man standing there, not personally, but by uneasy reputation and gossip, the kind of gossip that made him think, _Maybe he does know._

He struggled to find the right questions.

“How do I make it stop?”

He’d meant to ask how to control it, to ask for formal instruction, not to plead for help. But he _needed_ that dusty, mummy’s voice out of his head, those fingers of ancient thought crawling through his brain.

“Do you taste the blood in your teeth?” asked Obito, tapping his front teeth. “You must, if you’re bleeding that much. You have to stop fighting her, Sasuke. She’s not like the others; if you turn this into a battle, she’ll win. You’ll die.”

Stop fighting? How could he not fight this horrible feeling, like a fist closed around his mind, the feeling of eyes moving _inside_ of his own eyes. He squeezed them shut, and found in horror that he _could still see the chamber._

Through Aoda’s eyes, he saw them all watching him. Her eyes settled on red Kurama. Aoda knew him well; even within the egg, they had been able to commune, to hazard minds and fan petty injuries for what must have been nearly a century. A century of waiting, and bitterness waiting for its chance.

Through Aoda, Sasuke locked eyes with Naruto.

Naruto, standing there with his hand confidently placed on fiery Kurama’s shoulder, no fear in his eyes, only worry, worry for Sasuke in such deep blue, such intensity, that Sasuke thought he could drown in it.

The oldest rage boiled in his stomach.

Aoda latched onto their shared emotion with a kind of rapture. With a scream that tore every ear, she launched herself at her orange cousin with clean white teeth, ready to finally discover the taste of flesh.

Obito’s dragon intervened, slamming a massive, clawed hand down and pinning her to the rock floor by the neck. She screamed, not in pain, but with a rage so pure it made Sasuke see white. Dizzied, he reached out in the empty air for nothing.

Obito called his dragon’s name.

“_Kamui!”_

And suddenly, everything went dark and spun out of shape. Into nothing.

Sasuke landed on grass.

Rubbing his eyes, he sat up and squinted against the full sun— they were outside. Looking around, blinking hard, he recognized one of the training grounds he had visited with Itachi. Cut-out stone buildings made a life-sized model of a village, albeit one reduced to only a few neighborhoods. It was complete with roughly carved stone figures of people, some in flight, some standing face-upto fight.

Every inch of it was streaked with signs of fire, every building covered in the rake marks of dragon claws. Many of the human figures were shattered either by heat or by the crushing grasp of a draconic hand.

Aoda lay pinned in the center of it, surrounded by wrecked sculptures of dead men, screaming like she was being murdered. Kamui, Obito’s dragon, held her down almost lazily. Ignoring the hatchling, he looked around with eyes that should have been wheeling with Obito’s sharingan. Instead, they were flat black and placid. He wasn’t quite like the other dragons, either, Sasuke realized. He had the same dark top and pale underbelly, but he had a strange, pale dorsal stripe, and was altogether black and gray, with no hint of purple or blue.

Obito pulled Sasuke up from the ground. He pulled out a cloth and wiped fresh blood from Sasuke’s nose. Sasuke jerked away from his touch, and Obito released him, hands up in a ‘no harm, no foul’ gesture.

“Look at your fingers, Sasuke.”

Sasuke looked down; the backs of his fingers were splotched purple and red with burst veins. It was only then that he felt them throbbing. When had it happened?

“Your body can’t handle this conflict,” said Obito. “You’ll burst every vessel in your body, until it stops your heart or you bleed out, whichever comes first.”

“How do you know?”

“Because of this.” Obito pulled up the wrap that covered his left eye; there was nothing there but an empty stomach. “When you can’t take blunt control with the Sharingan, you have to resort to other methods.”

“But I have the Sharingan! In two eyes.”

“An immature Sharingan; your eyes are new, and hers are very old.” Obito eyed the howling dragon.

“How can she be old?” Sasuke held his bruised fingers up to his face. “She only hatched today…”

“Her eyes have been waiting in the dark for decades— for generations, maybe. Yours are no match.” Obito reached out as if to poke his forehead, but didn’t touch him. He sounded sympathetic, but he also sounded more interested than he sounded sympathetic.

Sasuke pressed his hand over a throbbing eye; Aoda’s presence pulsed behind it, seeking escape. “Can you let her go?” he burst out. Her struggle was agonizing.

Obito waved; Kamui took his weight off the hatchling’s neck. Immediately she struck, but he was too quick, taking flight in a neat snap of wings. He landed on a nearby roof to eye her from a safe distance, just as curious as his rider.

Aoda hesitated in her rage; it had suddenly occurred to her that she was in a truly strange place, and she stopped to take in the smells of flowers and trees. The stimuli struck Sasuke as if alien; and to her, it was. She had never been in the world before. For a second the pain abated in the face of her curiosity.

“Why is it just me?” asked Sasuke, looking on with only one eye, keeping the other covered. It was too much to face the sunlight through two sets of eyes, hers and his. “Naruto, Sakura, why weren’t they affected?” He suddenly looked around, realizing something. Sensing his confusion, Aoda looked up, too, scanning their surroundings. “Where are they?”

“Kamui can only teleport a certain number,” said Obito. “They’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

_Worry._ The image of Naruto’s worried face, his blue eyes, flashed in Sasuke’s mind, and he gritted his teeth. Aoda latched onto their shared thread of anger again, eagerly and almost with relief, like a child grabbing the hand of a parent in an unfamiliar crowd. The hatchling knew only two things in this world: the inside of an egg, and Sasuke. He felt her again trying to climb into his mind like it was a safe hiding place. His vision threatened to darken once more. “Why is it only me?” he asked again.

“It’s because you’re an Uchiha.”

The voice was a stranger’s.

Sasuke looked up, wiping darkness from his eyes. Squatting on the corner of a roof on the nearest building, next to a statue that had had its head torn off by a dragon, was the stranger. He wore the general uniform of a dragon rider, but the Uchiha clan symbol was conspicuously absent from it. Not that you needed that much of a clue to mark him as an outsider; the spiky silver hair was enough. He had his headband pulled down to cover one eye, much like a mirror image of Obito.

Sasuke recognized him with a frown.

“You’re Kakashi Hatake.”

Kamui took off from the roof of the other building, flashing shade over them and landing on the roof behind Kakashi. The dragon rested his chin on the roof next to the man as he stood, the dragon’s head still taller than even the top of that spiky hair.

“And you’re Sasuke Uchiha,” said Kakashi Hatake. “You’re not supposed to have awakened your Sharingan yet, let alone have a dragon, let alone have something like that.” With a nod at the purple hatchling, he jumped down to join them. “What happened, Obito?”

“Ah.” Obito scratched his ear. “Well, you know those three top secret, mysterious eggs, hidden deep in the creche, that nobody is supposed to know about — least of all you and I — because not even the elders know what might be unleashed if they’re allowed to hatch?”

“Yeah.”

“Well.” Obito jerked his chin at the hatchling. “Now we know.”

“They _are_ the ancients, then.” Kakashi crossed his arms and eyed her thoughtfully. “You were right.”

“Why do you have to sound so surprised?”

“What about the other two?”

“They both seemed to have hooked on as well— good news for you, Kakashi, you’ll no longer be the only non-Uchiha with a dragon.”

“Ah, look out. Here she comes.”

Finding herself alone, the purple hatchling was coming on with great speed— or, trying to. Still unused to her limbs, she tripped on every third step, and each time she tripped, she gave an angry shriek, and each time, her anger jarred in Sasuke’s eyes. He held his head in his hands.

“All right, crash course,” said Kakashi. “Sasuke, what’s your happiest memory?”

“My… happiest memory?”

“First thing that comes to mind. Quickest is best, in general, and also because we’ve got maybe twenty minutes to sort this out before it gets really bad.”

His happiest memory?

It was hard to summon any memory, least of all good ones, with that oppressive mind bearing down on his, feeling fresh bruises popping open all over his body. Of course the first thing he thought of was a memory of bruises… of bruised knees.

There had been an argument at home. He couldn’t remember the details— not who was fighting, not the reason for it. He had been too young to remember much of anything, only drilling himself with Itachi’s stolen shuriken, sneaking scrolls to study at night, watching his brother’s steps with jealousy, his parents’ with wistfulness, his memory as a whole full more of a _feeling_ than an image or a time. Just a feeling of smallness. Of not being much at all.

Running from the house, away from the compound and down to the river. It had been twilight, and his eyes were already fuzzy with what he would have denied were tears, so he didn’t see the rock in his path until he was already tripping over it.

He made it to the river with big, raw scrapes on his knees and his palms, and the bud of an ugly bruise right on the bottom of his chin. But he made it all the way to the river without crying, and by the time he sat on the dock and looked into the water, he found he didn’t have to cry anymore.

The river stretched ahead of him, far for a little kid. He could see the other side, but the people walking in the twilight, lit by the sunset, were only tiny dots, and their distance was comforting. This side of the river, there was never anybody this time of day. There was just him.

Just him.

He wrapped his arms around his knees and looked down at his reflection in the water. He was a little grateful when the water was too dark to show him more than an outline; even at that age, he was growing too aware of the Uchiha crest on his back, on the sameness of his face and his eyes, echoing back at him from every other person. He sometimes felt like he was fading into that crowd. Becoming even smaller, becoming even less. Just one more nameless, dark-haired bud of a soldier. A future rider of dragons.

Better to be alone.

When Sasuke heard footsteps, then, he was angry, and he whipped his head around to glare up the path, expecting to see Itachi having followed him.

But it wasn’t Itachi.

It was another kid. He stood up at the top of the path, looking down, like he had been coming to sit in the same spot, only to stop, finding it already occupied.

He had blonde hair, so he definitely wasn’t an Uchiha. What was he doing on this side of the river, Sasuke wondered? Nobody came here unless they had to.

Because he was a rude kid, and his feelings were hurt, as well as his knees, elbows, and chin, Sasuke glowered up at the strange boy. This was _his_ spot, and he wasn’t going to let some random kid infringe on his melancholy—

Except it wasn’t some random kid, he realized. It was Naruto Uzumaki.

Two kids already highly aware of each other, Naruto with his reputation as the trouble-making son of the late Hokage, Sasuke as the promising younger brother of Itachi Uchiha, they came across each other for the first time face to face, and not as distant observers.

Naruto’s first instinct was to scowl, too.

In unison, they both shot each other the ugliest looks a couple of kids their age were capable of.

Something about the result, their matching expressions, the immediacy of their antagonism, the fact that they’d both come to the same spot and that they’d had the exact same reaction to one another, was too ridiculous to take seriously.

Just as they’d matched glares, they both looked away at the exact same moment, and at the exact same moment, once their heads were turned away, they both smiled.

Sasuke remembered smiling, and as soon as he did, the purple dragon fell silent midscream.

He looked up out of his memories and into the face of the hatchling, who had stopped, blinking, only a few feet away. The blood in his eyes had stopped pounding. And her eyes, he realized, now contained the gently spinning red pinwheel of the Sharingan.

_His Sharingan._

“Good job, kid,” said Kakashi, clapping him on the shoulder. “Easy part’s over.”

“I hope you have an interest in inter-clan politics,” said Obito, crossing his arms. “Because this is going to be a _mess._”


End file.
